The Remains of Wing
by Zapenstap
Summary: He looked away from her, sinking into himself, shutting her out with a mere turn of the head. It was something he seemed to do unconsciously, making people feel like they didn’t exist, that they didn’t matter." 1xR. Short canon one-shot. IC. Plea


The Remains of Wing

By Zapenstap

The smell of blood hung in the air.

Relena walked alone down a narrow, darkened corridor underground.  Beneath the earth's surface, the stone walls sweated, slick with moisture.  She trailed her hands along those walls, her delicate fingers sharply feeling the contrast where smooth stone met rough rock.  There was little light to see by and she needed a guide.  Even in heels, her footfalls were sure and deliberate, but part of that was because she was concentrating so hard.

Her eyes peered into the darkness, trying to penetrate its thickness, looking for the door she knew was somewhere at the end of this tunnel.  It was here beneath Newport City that Noin had built a secret army long ago to defend her fragile kingdom, but only memories of a war-fraught past still remained.  If the right passages were taken, these tunnels would lead out to the harbor by way of a secret exit.  There were rooms just inside the rock cavern where the water flowed in, areas where boats had been docked for transport and where supplies and weapons had once been stored in hidden alcoves. 

It was all empty now.  The only thing that was reminiscent of the war that had destroyed this country these days was Heero's Wing Gundam, and no one had used it since Lady Une piloted it into space to save Treize Kushrenada.  The only thing it was useful for now was as a reminder, an anachronism of a world that was forever changed. 

The walls seemed to shrink inward, suffocating her sense of free space.  The smell of blood permeated the air.  It was that that made Relena's heart race and her thoughts static, not her memories of the past. The metallic scent of blood cut into her skull.  It wasn't the heavy, nauseating fumes that smothered battlefields, but the sharp, piercing scent of a single, flesh-torn wound.  The scent may only have been detectable to Relena.  It smelled to her also of gundanium and hard steel, of torn denim jeans, a green tank top and the too-thin emptiness of space.  That's what Heero smelled like to her.  Those sharp, hard scents that, when mingled with the thick smell of blood, was enough to make her lightheaded.  She wished she could see better.  She didn't know how much blood there was.

At length she found the door, a rusty metal plate closed over what once had been a storage room.  The trail of blood stopped here, but its presence was stronger, fresher, and she could hear voices on the other side.

"Heero," Sally Po cautioned, "I insist you take it easy for a couple of days.  A wound like this could break open if you're not careful.  You need to find a bed somewhere and stay in it until you're healed."

"Hmph.  Knowing him, he'll be up and about in a day or two."  It was difficult to tell if Wufei's comment was a praise or an insult.

Relena smiled even as her fingers pushed so hard against the door that her knuckles elevated and her nails turned white.  Sally and Wufei talked to Heero on a level, Preventors providing medical attention for a fellow ex-soldier when he was not able to admit he needed it.  Relena prepared herself to push the door open, knowing full well the consequences of her interfering, knowing the look Wufei would give her as a civilian whose public and passive peacekeeping position was sharply and immaturely juxtaposed with her so-called infatuation with ex-gundam pilot Heero Yuy. She also knew in advance the sympathy Sally would direct to her as a lonely woman burdened by her duties and suffering for love of someone who would not acknowledge her.

"Thank you," Heero replied, and though hearing his voice relieved her, his dark tone was too normal; devoid of the pain that he must be feeling from a gunshot wound in the shoulder.

Relena closed her eyes, leaning her head against the metal plate of the door to cool her temperature.  The pain he ignored hurt her, and not just because it was for her he had been shot, shoving her aside and taking the bullet aimed for her heart in his shoulder without a second of hesitation.  He had pushed her roughly to the ground, and coldly, the expression on his face never changing from the moment she was in danger to the moment he was shot and blood ran freely down his arm.  Her heart had burned in her chest when she stared up at the wound, his hand clapped over it in an attempt to impede the flow of blood, but he had only asked her if she was unharmed.  When she responded to the affirmative, he just walked away, blood seeping through his fingers, leaving her on her knees without looking back.  

Taking a deep breath, Relena pushed open the door.  

Heero sat on the edge of an old wooden table with his elbows on his knees, stripped of his shirt and with his left shoulder wrapped in white bandages.  His shirt was balled up further back on the table, patches soaked through with blood.  Sally stood just off to one side, replacing her medical aids into a doctor's hand bag she had propped up on the table on Heero's right.  Wufei stood with his arms crossed on Heero's left and scowled when she walked in.

"What is [i]she [/i]doing here?" Wufei muttered.  Relena said nothing.

"Relena," Sally interposed more kindly.  "You really shouldn't be here.  The area is dangerous.  I'd feel better if you were at the castle and under guard."

It was useless to argue with them.  They were right, but that wasn't why she was here.  "Heero," Relena began.  "I just wanted to be sure that you were okay."

He looked away from her, sinking into himself, shutting her out with a mere turn of the head.  It was something he seemed to do unconsciously, making people feel like they didn't exist, that they didn't matter. 

"Heero," she began again.

He turned his eyes on her when she persisted, skewering her with a gaze that stabbed her heart.  His bare chest was speckled with blood and the muscles by his shoulder spasmed when he breathed in deeply.  She saw it, and knew it must be painful, but though he winced momentarily, the lapse was so brief she almost missed it.

"You heard Sally," he said in low, even tones, cutting her off.  "It's not safe here.  Get lost."

"I came because I care," she said, and was determined that one day he would accept that that was true.  It was difficult to keep the emotion out of her voice.  "You mean a lot to me.  I was worried."

Wufei looked away, a gesture that was synonymous with a less conscientious person rolling their eyes.  Sally pretended as if she could not hear, continuing to pack up her medical supplies in silence.  Heero leveled her with a gaze that would have pinned her heart to a pegboard until it stopped beating if she had been a little bit weaker, but she stood her ground, maintaining eye contact in support of her statement and refused to yield.

Heero slid down from the table, careful to hold his arm still.  Grabbing his shirt from where it lay as discarded waste, he pulled it over his head, seemingly oblivious to the patches that were soaked with his own blood. Without a word, he strode past her so forcefully that she had to step clear to avoid being run down.  He did not look back.

"Relena," Sally began, half reaching for her, but Relena did not wait to hear what she knew the other woman would say.  Grimly setting her chin, she turned on her heel and followed Heero out of the room. 

He took the path out of the catacombs by way of the harbor and she followed resolutely, not speaking as he led her out into the cavern overlooking the sea.   The water that flowed into the holding dock was a deep blue darkened by the shade of its covering, but outside the sea sparkled with refracted sunlight.  Heero walked along the water's edge until he exited the cavern on a strip of dry ground where a pathway climbed up above the catacombs.  Relena followed, climbing the rocky steps to a hill that overlooked the ocean.  

In the shallows of the sea, the remains of Heero's Wing Gundam jutted into the sky, the white paint harshly reflecting the rays of the sun and gleaming with a sharp, eye-assaulting brilliance.  Shredded from the body as if torn off the back by large and powerful hands, the wings of the mobile suit stuck out of the water at odd angles so that the structure as a whole resembled some kind of mechanical, fallen angel.  Wing had been brought down to Earth after the end of the War and, useless after being destroyed by Libra's main canon, had been donated as a memorial to the Sank Kingdom with Heero's permission.   Its parts commemorated here in the pacifist lands of the Sank Kingdom reminded humanity of what they had gained by the destruction of weapons such as these.

The hilltop was cool, even cold at this hour, an ocean wind whipping Relena's hair in a streamline behind her back and pebbling her skin.  She shivered, but other than rippling his shirt and blowing his hair in his eyes, it didn't seem to touch Heero.  Nothing did; certainly not the temperature.  His eyes were clear, sharp and penetrating as he stared out at the remains of his gundam.

Relena stopped her approach some few paces away, watching Heero stare out over the ocean as he pointedly ignore her.  She waited like a supplicant, giving him space, knowing he wouldn't speak unless she did, and then responding only if he chose to.  But no matter how hard the wind blew, she wouldn't be uprooted; she wouldn't be driven away and she couldn't forget.

"Heero, I meant what I said."

He didn't answer at first.  He seemed to be listening to the waves crashing on the beach below.  She waited, not sure he would answer, not sure if he even understood what she meant.  

"I know."

He turned his head and the look he gave her broke her heart.  She didn't know how to describe it. There was nothing sentimental in it.  Heero was incapable of sentimentality.  But there was something of his eyes that told her what she wanted to know.

Cautiously, she walked forward and he turned away again, staring out over the sea with his hands hanging loosely at his sides. 

"I can't give you what you want," he said when she was near enough to touch him if she reached.  She didn't though.  She looked in the direction he did, letting him talk without pushing for it, standing just outside his personal space, though near enough to be affected by his proximity.  "You have a job to do," he continued.  "You should just do it and forget about me."

"I meant what I said," she repeated.  "I'm not going to change my mind about that." It wasn't a response to the question he hadn't asked, but neither was his.  It was always like that, talking around one another, giving the other the space to live alone.  But she didn't want to be alone.

Heero stared out at Wing and didn't say anything more.  Its brilliance was already starting to fade under the harsh sunlight and the steady lapping of the waves. Heero lifted a hand, looking at his palm as if at something strange and foreign to him.  Relena choked in the air, feeling herself shiver.  The white bandages on his arm was a sharp contrast to the dark olive tones of his skin, the flecks of blood fading from vibrant red to an oxidized brown.

Lowering his arm, Heero looked past his gundam and out over the sea at the horizon.  There was a way he set his shoulders that spoke of some sort of acceptance.   He turned his head slowly to look at her and Relena stepped forward as if pulled in by a string, joining him on the hilltop. She hoped that he might take her hand, but he didn't.  Heero only turned away again, but the movement that normally forced anyone from his circle somehow included her in his space.  He shifted so that his left shoulder was set behind her right one, and said nothing.

This was his peace, the peace he understood right now.  She understood too, and leaning her head against his chest, accepted his silence.

Did you read this one-shot?   Please review ^_^  I adore feedback.


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